The Warlock - a review

The author is an incredibly talented writer and makes the unbelievable seem not only believable, but terrifying. From the serene monastery to the opulent meals at Marat's abode to the cold English moors, Boving paints scenery like an artist. The cloud of danger hanging over Alan is so thick, it's palpable. Dark, creepy, sexually perverse rituals will make your skin crawl and demonic entities will keep you turning the pages well past the time you should be sleeping. Looking for it? Go to Amazon.com http://amzn.to/SdBqGI Amazon.co.uk http://amzn.to/RtEcYy

Review of "The Warlock"

Review by William Holt.

If you like big novels set on Aegean Islands, you could do far worse than to read Nicholas Boving's The Warlock. It will take you right into a monastery and to a strange den of iniquity, both set against each other on a little island with great natural beauty, primitive transport, and such people as may be found everywhere if you know where to look and if you don't mind being both uplifted and appalled. You won't easily forget the experience!

My other most vivid experience of the Grecian milieu, apart from Homer, is Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. Though evocative, Durrell, like many authors using first person pov, can be unnecessarily obscure and suffocatingly subjective. Nothing of that sort appears in Nicholas's narrator. He's likable, straightforward, and not troubled with any of Durrell's misty romanticism, which from the first paragraphs of Justine, put me in mind of Lovecraft, though he's differently oriented and certainly superior in talent.

The Warlock - review

Powerful and compelling, the story of Allan Collins unfolds. He is an over-worked executive who takes a sabbatical at the monastery of Agios Dimitrios on the lonely Grecian island of Melanos on the advice of his physician. He encounters Vincent Marat, a man who Alan is warned by the Abbot not to be taken in by. Though Alan takes the advice, he can't help but seeing Marat, who calls himself Ipsissimus, the highest grade of magician, as nothing more than an egotistical and hedonistic deviant.

The Warlock is a winning combination of outstanding storytelling, marvelous writing, poetic prologue, strong narration and dialogue, with Gothic overtones. This is the way thrillers and horror genres should be written.

Review by L. Anne Carrington

Now read on - a new chapter every week.